I wrote a couple of
days ago about how Aśvaghoṣa's use of the locative absolute saty
ātmani (“so long as the soul persists”) in BC12.73, and the
equivalent construction yatra.... tatra... (“where [the soul
prevails]... there...”) in BC12.74, deliberately avoids identifying
one of two elements as cause and the other as effect. The
construction rather describes the two factors as being present
together, like chicken and egg, and leaving it to the reader to
decide which came first.

By repeating the
locative absolute saty ātmani in today's verse, Aśvaghoṣa is
giving us ample opportunity to get the point.

Neither EBC nor EHJ, by
their translations, showed any evidence of having got the point.
Hence,

EBC: But as for this
supposed abandonment of the principle of egoism, — as long as the
soul continues, there is no real abandonment of egoism.

EHJ: And as for this
imagined abandonment of the ego-principle, so long as the soul
persists, there is no abandonment of that principle.

PO, however, provides
clear evidence of not having got the point:

This abandonment of
ego that you imagine to take place – When there's a soul, the
abandonment of the ego cannot take place.

PO's translation
reflects the ostensible reading which Aśvaghoṣa, I suspect, was
cynically inviting the unwary to fall for. But by implying that the
soul is the impeding factor which prevents abandonment from taking
place, PO's translation blots out the real meaning of the
bodhisattva's words.

“When there's a
soul, the abandonment of the ego cannot take place” makes it
sound like (a) the continued real existence of the soul, is like
fire; and (b) failure to abandon, is like smoke. Or like (a) is real
root cause and (b) is symptomatic effect.

But what the
bodhisattva actually says is only that where the soul persists, there
abandonment is not found. So this could equally well mean that (a)
the positing of “a soul” is a symptom, like smoke; and (b) the
absence of abandonment is the real root cause, like a fire that has
yet to be extinguished.

In order for it to convey the latter meaning, PO's translation should read:

“When there's a soul, the abandonment of the ego cannot have taken place”

If we follow PO in
following the ostensible meaning in which continued real existence of
the soul is a causal factor preventing abandonment of ego / self-consciousness / "I-doing", then the
bodhisattva must reject the whole of Arāḍa's teaching as being founded on a faulty premise. But, as we
explored seven or eight weeks ago, Aśvaghoṣa presented Arāḍa's
teaching about the causes of saṁsāra, including ahaṁ-kāra
self-consciousness, in such a way that Arāḍa's teaching about the causes of saṁsāra can be read as not
diverging by a hair's breadth from the Buddha's teaching about the
causes of saṁsāra. In other words, it is possible to understand that although Arāḍa's conclusion about the meaning of liberation was totally false, his analsysis of the causes of saṁṣāra was perfectly true. Thus,

Ignorance, karma, and
thirsting are to be known as the causes of saṁsāra; / A creature
set in these three ways fails to transcend the aforementioned Sattva,
Being – //BC12.23// [It fails] because of wrong grounding, because of
“I-doing” self-consciousness, because of blurring of sight,
because of blurring of boundaries, / Because of lack of
discrimination and wrong means, because of attachment, and because of
pulling down.//12.24// Among those, “wrong grounding” keeps
setting movement in the wrong direction – / It causes to be done
wrongly what is to be done; and causes to be thought wrongly what has
to be thought. //12.25// I speak, I know, I go, I stand firm – / It
is thus that here, O unselfconscious one!, the self-consciousness of
“I-doing” carries on.//12.26//.... “The seer, the hearer, the
thinker, and the very act of doing of what is to be done – / All
that is I.” Having fallen into such thoughts, around and round he
goes in saṁsāra. //12.38// Thus, O perspicacious one!, in the
presence of these causes the stream of births starts flowing. / In
the absence of causes, there is no effect, as you are to
investigate.//BC12.39//

If we take the
alternative way of reading today's verse, then, the bodhisattva is
not rejecting this part of Arāḍa's teaching. He is rather telling
Arāḍa the truth that Arāḍa has not yet got to the end of his
own teaching. And this failure of Arāḍa to realize the
consummation of his own true teaching (but do not call it
Brahmanism!) is evidenced by Arāḍa's irrational belief in the
existence of a soul that can leave the body like a bird escaping from
a cage.

In
terms of the teaching of pratītya-samutpāda with its twelve links,
the persistence of the so-called ghost in the machine -- or the view of
people like the young Sting that “we are spirits in the material
world” -- might be a symptom of ignorance (avidyā).
And this ignorance might be the real causal grounds for all
doings (saṁskārāḥ), including the self-consciousness of
“I-doing.”

The challenge that lies
before the bodhisattva, then, is true abandonment of the
self-consciousness of “I-doing.” And this abandonment is never to
be found in an act of doing. According to Nāgārjuna it is realized,
on the contrary, in an act of knowing. Hence,

ignorance avidyā

doings saṁskārāḥ

consciousnessvijñānam

psychophysicality nāmarūpam

six
senses ṣaḍ-āyatanam

contact saṁsparśaḥ

feeling vedanā

thirsting tṛṣṇā

grasping
hold upādānam

becoming bhavaḥ

birth jātiḥ

the
suffering of aging and death, and so on, sorrows, lamentations...
jarā-maraṇa-duḥkhādi
śokāḥ saparidevanāḥ....

...saṁsāra-mūlaṁ
saṁskārān avidvān saṁskaroty ataḥ |

avidvān
kārakas tasmān na vidvāṁs tattva-darśanāt ||MMK26.10

The
doings which are the root of saṁsāra

Thus
does the ignorant one do.

The
ignorant one therefore is the doer;

The
wise one is not, because of the act of reality making itself known.